


honey, honey (kiss me kindly)

by bytheinco_nstantmoon



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: And then he didn't, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Carrie Wilson, Bisexual Reggie (Julie and The Phantoms), Caleb Covington Backstory, Carrie Wilson Redemption, Character Study, Coming of Age, In a sense, Introspection, Male-Female Friendship, Multi, POV Alternating, Reggie Has Bad Parents (Julie and The Phantoms), Road Trips, Running Away, Self-Doubt, and the way it can't fix everything, bonus points if u know who it is, but i did so here she is, caleb is a bastard but like in a helpful way, i just wanted Her, i once again add so much lore, it's not actually a secret i just didn't want to tag a crossover, no i didn't need to write this, since it's not a crossover, so..... now we have This, tfw u only learn how to live once you die, the oc is actually not an oc, the power of FRIENDSHIP!, this started off as reggie joining caleb
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:53:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27880325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bytheinco_nstantmoon/pseuds/bytheinco_nstantmoon
Summary: It’s part of an actor, part of a mask; it’s a part of him that hides everything he doesn’t want to bother with. It’s a tear of the tarp on which he reflects his little shadow show.It tears, and here he is, sitting on the beach. Here he is, sitting in the sand with Caleb fucking Covington, watching the sunset as the waves turn gold, and he is the most real he’s ever been.-or; Reggie has some thinking to do. But he can't do it with his friends, and he can't do it alone.
Relationships: Alex & Julie Molina & Luke Patterson & Reggie, Alex/Willie (Julie and The Phantoms), Reggie & Willie (Julie and The Phantoms), Reggie (Julie and The Phantoms) & Original Female Character(s), Reggie (Julie and the Phantoms) & Caleb Covington, Reggie/Carrie Wilson
Comments: 12
Kudos: 59





	honey, honey (kiss me kindly)

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this completely on impulse??? it sure do exist. it was not intended to have Meaning and Purpose but it certainly does now. im too gay i had to make it thematic :/

“It’s a lovely night, isn’t it?” Caleb asks amicably. He’s standing behind him, his shadow looming like it means to block the sunset. His voice makes Reggie’s skin crawl, makes Reggie’s throat tighten, makes Reggie’s shoulders tense- but Reggie just shrugs. “You’re not enjoying it?” Caleb asks, something like mock sympathy in his voice.

Reggie shrugs again. “Don’t know. Wasn’t really paying attention.” He shouldn’t be talking to Caleb. He should be running far, far away. Far enough that Caleb doesn’t bother coming after him. Back to Luke and Alex and Julie and-

He feels sick.

He looks up at Caleb and says, “How have you been?” because he thinks maybe staying here is better than the alternative.

Caleb laughs and takes a seat at Reggie’s side. He sits exactly how Reggie would have thought- with his legs out in front of him, crossed at the ankles, leaning back on his hands. There’s an easy kind of grace to Caleb’s movements. An assurance that he has time to move slowly, that he won’t fall prey to anyone but himself. Reggie has never moved like that. “Something on your mind?”

Reggie laughs. “As if I’d tell you,” he says, and Caleb just raises one eyebrow at him, so of course he does. What’s the harm? “I met Luke when I was ten,” he says. Kicks the sand. “He was… you know, he was  _ Luke.  _ He was everything to me the very first time I saw him. He just- it’s probably just because I’m stupid, I don’t know, but I was like, obssessed with him. In this dorky kid kind of way. Bobby thought it was the funniest thing in the world.” He takes a deep breath, keeping his eyes fixed on the sunset. “Luke’s always been there, you know? And it’s funny, ‘cause Luke and I- we’re both kinda loud, we’re both kinda showoffs. I’ve never thought there was anything wrong with that.”

“I agree,” Caleb says. His voice is smooth, but not in the silky, off putting way from before. Just smooth with confidence. He doesn’t have to worry that he wouldn’t be heard. He just speaks and knows he will be. Reggie has never spoken like that. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting attention. Truly, there’s only anything wrong with what you do once you have it.” Caleb’s eyes linger on Reggie with a kind of raised eyebrow, like a dare. Like he’s taunting him to tell him what he did.

But that’s a story for another day, so Reggie just smiles and says, “Yeah, well-” he thinks about his next words, about what he’s willing to reveal to the man that tried to kill him a second time, but he only thinks for a moment, because Reggie’s never been good at having qualms. He’d rather jump all in headfirst. “My parents always fought,” he says. “My whole life. They must have loved each other at some point, I guess, but I never saw that, so-” he shrugs. “It’s kinda funny. Not really, ‘cause it was hell, but you know. Funny all the same.”

“You do have a habit of repressing your emotions under humor,” Caleb agrees, which- like yeah, but he didn’t have to say it.

Reggie rolls his eyes a little. “Yeah, well- not the point.” Caleb chuckles, but gestures for him to continue. “I always hated fighting because of them,” he continues. “But Luke and I- sure, he’s everything to me, but he’s loud, and he’s intense, and he’s got a one track mind. And I’m loud, and I’m obsessive, and I want to be on stage. I like attention. I love attention. And I love earning it. I love knowing that what I do, what I put my life and my heart and my soul into, is enough to earn me that secondhand love.” He can see Caleb nodding from the corner of his eye, all slow, his face relaxed. He’s not smiling, not smirking, not scowling- just watching. Just regarding Reggie with all the rivets of his vision. “So Luke and I, we fight. We’re best friends, you know? He’s my everything. So every part of me-” he takes a short breath, one that shudders through him. “Every part of me  _ hates  _ him sometimes,” he finishes. His voice has dropped lower. It rolls roughly off his tongue, taking part of him away with the confession.

It’s part of an actor, part of a mask; it’s a part of him that hides everything he doesn’t want to bother with. It’s a tear of the tarp on which he reflects his little shadow show.

It tears, and here he is, sitting on the beach. Here he is, sitting in the sand with Caleb fucking Covington, watching the sunset as the waves turn gold, and he is the most real he’s ever been.

That’s poetic. Maybe. There’s a half-formed thought in his head, something about dying in order to live, but he doesn’t dwell on that right now. He just tears the tarp and soaks in the rivets of Caleb’s attention before he speaks again. “Fighting fucks me up, but fighting with Luke doesn’t. Fighting with Luke is fine. We always come back to each other, even when we don’t really want to.” He rolls his shoulders and leans back on his hands. “But-”

Caleb cocks his head, looking him over carefully, eyes catching the light of the setting sun and throwing it onto Reggie like a spotlight. “But,” he echos, and then clicks his tongue. “Ah. Alexander.”

Reggie smiles humorlessly. “Alex and I don’t fight,” he replies. “It’s not something we do. He’s anxious, and fighting fucks me up, so-” he lets out a long, deep breath. “We learned to just walk away.” Caleb already knows, he can tell, but he says it anyway. “It’s just that sometimes, you know, sometimes you walk away, and you don’t really want to walk back.”

That hangs in the air between them for a long moment.

“You know,” Caleb says, and he- well, it’s hard to explain. But his voice is smooth, and his voice is calm, and there’s no manipulation in it. There’s just something soft and low and sweet. Something like acceptance. “William does love him.”

“Of course he does. Doesn’t everyone?”

“Don’t you?”

Reggie hums. “Not like that. I mean, yeah, I love him. He’s my best friend. He’s- it wasn’t like Luke, where I saw him and everything was suddenly right there. But I saw him and I felt like everything was a little more okay.” He pauses. “Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s just…” he lets out a long, long breath. “Maybe,” he says again, “Luke is everything. Maybe he’s all that fire and all that light and all that endless passion, just like everyone sees in him. Maybe he’s the sun and the earth and the moon. Maybe he did hang the stars. How should I know? I’m just a boy that loves him.” He smiles wryly. “Maybe Luke is everything, and maybe- you know, maybe Alex is  _ more.  _ Maybe Alex is the sky and the galaxies and the whole universe that holds him. Maybe Alex makes Luke into what he is.”

The sun is turning everything into a brilliant kind of light show, throwing fireworks and shadows across the beach. Across Caleb and Reggie, sitting together on sand as Reggie throws himself headfirst into the twenty second chapter of Revelations.

“Maybe Luke really is everything, and maybe Alex is everything he needs to keep steady,” he repeats slowly. “And maybe- maybe I’m just Reggie.”

It really is a lovely night.

Reggie stretches his legs out in front of him and crosses his ankles. His body is unfurled. Relaxed. He’s here and just here, and he has time to stay; he is content in the moment. Caleb can’t hurt him here. This is Reggie’s beach. This is Reggie’s sunset. Caleb doesn’t have anything but his own time on his hands right now.

“That’s very poetic,” he says.

“Thank you.”

He laughs a little. “It’s a little sad, though, isn’t it?”

“I guess.” Reggie tilts his face up to let the wind rush over it. “Not really, though. Not to me. I’ve always had to earn love. I don’t want to have to earn it from them, too.” Caleb shifts, his face turning peculiar. Not in any way that makes Reggie feel threatened, though, so he keeps watching the sky. “It’s exhausting more than anything,” he admits. “You know, I wanted to say yes.”

“Oh?” Caleb doesn’t look maliciously delighted, as Reggie had half-expected. He looks surprised. A bit smug, maybe, but that’s fair enough. Caleb likes to win. Reggie can understand that.

He gives a little laugh of his own. “Yeah. You know, I guess I didn’t really see the point. Disappearing or crossing over when we could just be-” he drew in a long breath, closing his eyes, and lets all his pent up frustration and confusion and overwhelming  _ disgust  _ from the past few weeks come rushing out as he breathes one last, damning word.  _ “Adored.” _

The wind feels nice. It drifts over him. It feels like a soft salvation. The only one he’ll get, probably.

Caleb opens his mouth, but Reggie speaks again before he can say anything. “I’m not joining the club.”

“I wasn’t asking you to.”

Reggie smiles. “Good. Because I’m not.” He tilts his head over to look at Caleb. There’s a gentle kind of acceptance between them here. “I don’t know where I’m going,” he admits. It’s solid. It’s sure. He’s never been more certain of anything than the uncertainty he holds now. “But it’s nowhere I’ve been before. Luke can’t be my everything anymore. I’m not even half of everything to him. That’s too- I’m too tired.” He shouldn’t be smiling, he doesn’t think, but he doesn’t want to stop. He feels okay. Satisfied, even. He’s content. “I have worked for my whole life and death to make people happy. To fix my parents, to fix my friends, to fix Julie. But none of it worked. My parents kept fighting. My friends kept falling apart. Julie had to fix herself. There was nothing I could do for that. So why do I stay? Why do I keep trying when all I ever get is this- well, this?” He laughs. It’s not as empty as before. “I’m already dead. I can’t keep dying inside for them.”

Caleb hums. Shifts so that he can pat Reggie’s shoulder. “Well, you’ve got to be selfish sometimes,” he says. “I’ll admit I didn’t learn much in my time alive, but I learned that. You’re in this world for you. There’s nothing for it but to make the world you want to be in.” He looks back out at the ocean. “I used to come here,” he reflected quietly. “With Idoya.”

“Idoya?”

A smile crosses his face. “My daughter,” he says softly. “She was... she loved the sea. More than anything.” He looks back at Reggie. “She deserved better than I gave her,” he admits. His voice is solemn. “It took two decades of death to realise that. But she took what she ended up with and made herself into everything I never could have been. She made herself honest. She made herself kind. She made herself an artist, and a traveller, and a mother. She was a better mother than she ever had.” He snorts. “Then again, she never had a mother.” Reggie snickers slightly, and Caleb gives him a wry smile. “Her father tried his best to raise her, but it was Idoya that made her way in the world. She made herself a million things, but do you know what I’m most proud of?”

Reggie turns a little further towards him. “What?”

“Despite everything,” Caleb says quietly. “Despite all of it, Idoya made herself  _ happy.” _

The waves wash up on the shore, like a symphony. Endless and steady and sweet. Reggie lays damned in the sunset, and he feels more divine than he ever did with the holy fire in Luke’s eyes.

“If you have to go somewhere you’ve never been to make yourself happy, then by God, Reginald, go to the ends of the earth,” Caleb tells him. His voice is earnest, and open, and Reggie knows without asking that Caleb’s only peace is in his own discontent. “Make yourself loud. Make yourself selfish. Make yourself adored. But wherever you go, and whatever you do, make yourself  _ happy.”  _ His eyes are heavy on Reggie’s. “Idoya would not be proud of me,” he admits quietly. “Make her proud of you.”

Reggie looks out at the sky, at the sun and the first emerging stars, and he sees Luke. He sees seven years of love, seven years of obsession, seven years of  _ passion-  _ he sees Luke, and he sees Alex with him, the gold of the sky caught in the gold of his hair. He sees Luke, and he sees Alex with him, and he sees Julie in the beauty of it all. There’s her voice in the divinity. There’s her hands, her gentle touch, in the drifting evening wind. There’s a mosaic in the sky that takes his breath away.

But Idoya’s name puts it back in his lungs. He pushes himself up, ready to stand, and pauses. “Caleb.” Caleb hums. He shifts, feeling the fire in his own eyes. Feeling the holiness sparking up through him that he has admired from afar all this time. “Give me one thing.”

Caleb shifts up too, regarding him carefully. “And what is that?”

Reggie takes a deep breath, and then squares his shoulders. “When I was at the club,” he says, “I saw a girl. She played the drums. Dark hair, dark eyes, she was wearing red-”

Caleb hums in recognition. “Bella,” he says. “Yes, of course. What about her?”

“Her,” Reggie says. “That night, she came by while I was dancing. She said I was doing the footwork wrong. I wasn’t.” Caleb raises a brow. “She looked up at the clock, just after that. She wanted me to know I was doing something I would regret, I think. Let me ask her. Just that one question. And if the answer is yes…” he fixes his eyes onto Caleb’s and burns. “Let her come with me.”

The ocean’s symphony plays in the background. Caleb tilts his head in thought for just a moment before he nods and holds out his hand. “If the answer is yes, she goes with you,” he agrees. “Bella hasn’t been with me long. We’ll miss her, but it won’t gut our band.” Reggie shakes with all the confidence he’s never had before and hops to his feet. “We have a performance tonight,” Caleb continues. “Eight o’clock. You’ll be there, I presume?”

“At 7:45,” Reggie replies, and he shouldn’t be smiling, but he has no reason not to. “Is there a dress code?”

Caleb curls his lip. “Oh, Reginald,” he sighs. “If there were, your boys wouldn’t have gotten in the first time.”

Reggie is still laughing as Caleb vanishes into the salty air. He turns to look out at the horizon. The sun is almost set. Dusk is thrown carelessly out over the beach, layering it in brown and grey and faded lilac. He sticks his hands in his pockets, grinning senselessly. It’s a lovely night. “I’m happy for you,” he says to the sea, and to the face he doesn’t know that he can almost picture among the waves. “I’m gonna be just as happy as you.”

Idoya is laughing in the wind, he thinks, and grins wider. Yeah.

He’s gonna be someone he’s never been before.

He looks out at the sun still hovering on the horizon and sees Luke hovering there with it. His smile shrinks down, bittersweet. “Damn you,” he says softly. “And damn your stars.” Luke doesn’t look very concerned. That’s fair. Reggie’s never concerned him much. “You hung them crooked, anyway.”

“I think they’re nice.”

Reggie tilts his head up to the sky, laughing silently. “What is this, a ghostly gathering spot?” he asks wryly. He turns away from the sun, letting his gaze fall fully on Willie. He’s got his hands shoved in his pockets. He looks something like concerned.

“I was wondering how you were,” he says. “You looked lonely.”

Reggie shakes his head. “No, no,” he replies, and steps a little closer. Willie’s brow is creased. “You’ve got it all wrong. Here, right now,” Idoya’s hand lays on his shoulder as the wind brushes over it. “I’m not lonely anymore.” He laughs out loud. Willie startles back at the noise, but Reggie can’t be fucked to care. “I’m not lonely anymore!” he repeats, and then one more time, “I’m not  _ lonely  _ anymore!” shouting it right up to the sky. It hangs there among the stars. The twenty second chapter of Revelations. “I’ve never been just… all myself before,” he says. “I’ve been all by myself. God, I’m all by myself everyday. But all myself, all just me-” he laughs again, shaking his head. “I’m  _ just me,”  _ he repeats reverently. “You’re just you, Willie, and I’m just me.” He lets his eyes fall onto the skater. He looks alarmed, maybe, on the edge of something panicked. “Stop feeling guilty,” he says.

“What?”

“Stop feeling guilty,” Reggie repeats. “You’re just you, Willie. It’s not your fault that we went to Caleb.” Willie bites his lip as a bone deep pain, a guilt that runs through him like blood, crosses his face. Reggie clicks his tongue disapprovingly. “You’re just you,” he says for a third time. “For the love of God, Willie, you’ve gotta let that be enough.”

Willie’s shoulders fall. “But what if it’s not?” he asks. Whispers, more like, his voice drifting across the darkening space between them.

Reggie reaches out to tap the back of his hand on Willie’s shoulder, just like Luke always does to him. “Then you’re not letting it.” Willie snorts. “I mean it, Wills.”

_ “Wills?”  _ he repeats incredulously. “What are you, drunk?”

Reggie laughs. “God, I wish. Nah. I just thought it sounded cute.” Willie shrugs. “See, you like it!” He taps his shoulder again. “You can’t make yourself be anyone but Willie. Just… don’t try to. Just be someone that’ll make you happy.” He checks his watch. “Okay. Therapy session over,” he announces.

Willie rolls his eyes goodnaturedly. “Aw, but doc, I didn’t even get to talk about my crippling anxiety,” he jokes.

Reggie scrunches his nose up at him. “Well, maybe you oughta talk to your boyfriend about that, kiddo.” Willie scrunches his nose up right back. It looks funny on him. “I’ve got a show to catch. Night, Wills.”

“See you around,” Willie says as Reggie prepares to leave.

He pauses. Lets his eyes hover heavy over Willie’s face for a moment, lit up by the moon and by the galaxies that held it. Willie’s eyes looked like the Milky Way. “No,” he says quietly. “I don’t think you will.”

It really is a lovely night.

He settles into his seat at 7:46 and catches gazes with Caleb standing offside the stage. He winks. Caleb rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling, and he offers a wave of greeting. Reggie grins, looking up at the set. Bella is already in place. She’s wearing gold tonight.

The lights begin to dim. “Ladies and gentlemen of the city of angels, are you ready for some music?” the speakers ask, prompting a cheer from the crowd. Reggie grins and kicks his feet up onto the empty chair beside his, watching Bella flip her drumsticks in her hands.

It’s showtime.

**Author's Note:**

> i!! hope you liked it!! please drop a comment to let me know!! yes i am going for a rarepair only i care abt. this is fine i love them very much. anyway
> 
> come bother me on tumblr @bobbywilsonsupremacy!! my dms are always open and i am always willing to talk


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